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the hobbit- the desolation of smaug

Radio Updates

By Audio and Cinema

I man­aged to fit in a couple of appear­ances on Radio New Zealand National in the busy late-December period.

Arts on Sunday podcast iconFirstly, The Listener’s Helene wong and I joined Simon Morris on the Arts on Sunday for a chat about the state of New Zealand cinema in 2013 promp­ted by the recent New Zealand Film Awards (or “Moas”).

Nine to Noon podcast iconThen, just before every­one broke for the Christmas break I paid Kathryn Ryan a vis­it at Nine to Noon to dis­cuss my high­lights of the year and Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

 

Review: The Hobbit- An Unexpected Journey and Love Is All You Need

By Cinema and Reviews

It may be play­ing in cinemas but I’m not entirely con­vinced that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – and, by exten­sion, the forth­com­ing Desolation of Smaug and There and Back Again – is actu­ally cinema. At least not cinema the way that this par­tic­u­lar old geez­er remem­bers it. First, let us put aside the tech­no­lo­gic­al innov­a­tion for a few para­graphs and focus on the story. These films have been been cre­ated to deliv­er an exper­i­ence to exist­ing fans of the Lord of the Rings films and is argu­ably even more tailored to their needs than, say, the Twilight fran­chise is to their fans. It cer­tainly makes as few con­ces­sions to the neutral.

Fans from Bratislava to Beirut want to spend as much time as pos­sible in Middle Earth and writer-director Peter Jackson deliv­ers – to the extent that sev­er­al famil­i­ar char­ac­ters make inel­eg­ant cameo appear­ances and the audi­ence gets to spend con­sid­er­able time accli­mat­ising. It really doesn’t mat­ter that I think the whole thing faffs around for far too long and already feels hyper-extended. Criticising The Hobbit for length is fall­ing in to the trap of review­ing the film you wish you were watch­ing instead of the one in front of you.

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